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This page is here to showcase the process of my first guitar build,
it'll be updated more or less whenever progress has been made...
The Design
The whole point of making a guitar for me is to create a guitar
that is singularly my own, something unique that suits my needs and my
playing, and also, just to have a blast actually building it. That said,
it meant I had to come up with a shape for the guitar, build templates
for it and so on myself.
I went through a series of drawings, knocking around shapes in neopaint,
learning how to actually balance a guitar shape so that everything was
in proportion and ultimately looked right. Things like this are
subjective I know, but to me at least, I'm happy with what I finally
ended up with.
I realise that the shape in this picture still isn't fully balanced, the
lower bout isn't quite right and the headstock is too skinny, however,
the design changed further once it got to the template.
Wood wise I went for a mahogany core and backing, with two maple wings,
a solid maple neck and a birdseye maple fretboard, lots of maple, but
it's easier to remove treble than to add it.
In terms of hardware I went for a Les Paul style package, with a Gotoh
tunomatic bridge and tailpiece, a fender spec width nut (42mm) and a 3
by 3 headstock angled back at 13 degrees. Pickups are supplied in the
form of Two Lace custom shop buckers at the neck and bridge, and a Lace
hot gold single coil in the middle.
The Beginning
Here's the first part of the body blank gluing up
after truing up the sides of the boards with a No.7 plane (minus the
mahogany cap on the back)
The rough paper template on the bodyblank to check everything will fit
(note the discrepancies in bridge and control layout and such, I changed
my mind a lot during the process, and adjusted things constantly).
The mahogany cap for the back of the body gluing up
The mahogany cap gluing on the back of the body blank.
This is the bodyblank after rough cutting to shape with a jigsaw, it
still needs the wings levelling with mahogany core of the body, in
retrospect, I should have done this before rough cutting the shape, and
it's something i'll do differently next time.
Next up, the neck blank!
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